


corresponding shapes

by flybbfly



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 08:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12979722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly
Summary: Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard met when their bands toured together. Now they're touring separately, and Neilhatesit.





	corresponding shapes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quensty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quensty/gifts).



> this got out of hand lmao
> 
> for [quensty](http://quensty.tumblr.com/)—i hope you like this!!! i think we have the same birthday so if that's right yay moon prism pisces power! if that's wrong or if you don't like this please feel free to message me anywhere and i will rectify it immediately anyway ily and i tried to write a band AU for you. it's mostly just pining have fun <3 <3

“We used to be called the Monsters, but too many people thought we were a Gaga cover band since our drummer and our bassist are so short,” Nicky is saying, cheerfully, to Jimmy Fallon's live studio audience. “Get it? Because they're little—” 

“Little Monsters!" Jimmy guesses. "Right, oh my god, hilarious!” Between them, Kevin gives a little chuckle that almost sounds genuine.

Neil stretches back in his bunk, fast forwards to when Jimmy leads Nicky and Kevin off his couches and toward the stage. Andrew and Aaron are there already, Aaron tuning his bass and Andrew—Neil ignores the beat his heart skips, carefully schools his expression into blankness because Matt is just above him and liable to lean down at any moment—carefully poised to begin Otto Cyan's first song of the set.

They have instruments, but they're still, Neil thinks with some smugness, a boy band. At least that's the way they're being marketed by their label. Despite their wannabe-punk clothing, their songs are radio-friendly, slightly overproduced used-to-be-indie pop; it's the kind of thing they'd play on Radio Disney, probably. Neil wouldn't know. It'd be too annoying to fiddle with the radio every time they cross state lines on the off chance he'd catch a Cyan song on a kids' station and get to make fun of Andrew about it. 

“They sound pretty good, actually,” Matt says, hanging—predictably—down to look at Neil. “Aren't you proud of them? They've come so far.” He wipes a fake tear away from his eye. “Our little Otto Cyan.”

“We're the ones who've come far,” Neil says. Well—not them, exactly. “Or Dan has, anyway.”

Matt gets a distant look on his face. As the touring bassist for Dan The Wilderness, his girlfriend and lifelong crush, he'd know all about pride. Eight months ago, they were opening for Otto Cyan. Now they're headlining their own North American tour. It's a lot of growth for an artist whose debut full-length came out in August. Neil understands Matt's expression intimately—after all, he'd know all about being obsessed with other people's talent. 

“Minyard's offbeat,” Matt adds.

He is; it's subtle, but Andrew isn't playing at his usual level.

“It's Jimmy Fallon,” Neil says. “He probably cares even less about that than he does about their regular shows.”

Matt snorts. “What a snob.” 

Neil knows better. Andrew isn't a snob, he just doesn't care. There's no point in trying to convince Matt otherwise, though. Matt is pretty biased. 

“You miss having them around?” 

“I,” Neil says. “They're really talented.”

“Minyard's offbeat,” Matt says again.

“Yeah, but when he isn't.”

“I think you actually like them as people,” Matt says. His hair doesn't move at all, even upside down like this, even when the bus goes over a pothole. “Not just Nicky, either. Kevin too. Maybe even the twins.”

“I don't like the twins,” Neil protests. Just the one. “Besides, I like you and Dan, too.”

“And Renee,” Matt adds. 

“Why aren't you interrogating her? She and Andrew are friends.” 

Matt's smile is back, wide and knowing. “You know, we're betting on you.”

“Me and Renee?”

“You and Otto Cyan. Dan thinks you're just waiting for tour to end to hop on their bus for good.”

“I'm not,” Neil says. Besides, Otto Cyan don't need another guitarist.

“ _I_ know that.”

“What are you betting?”

Matt pulls himself back onto his own bunk with some effort. “Can't tell you. I'll let you know if I win, though.”

Neil rolls his eyes. He's pretty sure Matt has never won a bet concerning him. It's not likely he'll start now.

*

Their show that night is in a sold out arena in New Orleans.

Neil's heart isn't in it; they're a month into their North American tour, and Otto Cyan are on the opposite side of the continent. 

This time, Dan the Wildnerness are headlining, and their openers are FAST, a male-female duo with all the chemistry and affection of Sid and Nancy. Dan, Matt, and Renee seem to kind of get along with Allison; Neil almost always feels uncomfortable around her and her bandmate. 

Neil doesn't mind headlining—he's not the person people are taking infinite photographs of, after all; just her touring guitarist, an employee doing a job—but touring was more fun when there was the promise of Andrew after every show. Even if they were just sitting on Cyan's bus, Andrew smoking surreptitiously out a cracked window while they barreled down the highway toward Minneapolis; or at an afterparty at some nightclub, Neil pressed into the bar by the crush of the crowd trying to get drinks or meet Dan or Kevin, Andrew separating him from the strangers; or else in a hotel room somewhere, Andrew's insistence on his own room winning him and Neil privacy that became precious due to its rarity. It was better just to be near Andrew, even if it meant a smaller paycheck and a shorter set.

They talked for the first time at a tour kickoff party. Kevin had already greeted Neil as friendlily as Neil could expect given the history between their families, Neil had met the other three all at once, and he didn't have a good understanding of which twin was which yet.

Neil didn't like parties then. He still doesn't, really. They were just kind of intimate when Andrew was there with him. 

That night, he was hiding in the corner of the hotel room, sipping a Coke and letting some guitar tech fill his ear with musical instrument jargon. He wasn't paying very much attention. Mostly he was watching the door despite not having very much to be scared of.

The quieter of the Minyard twins caught Neil's eye across the room, raised two fingers to his lips in the international symbol for “Cigarette?” and gestured toward the balcony. It was March in New York, too cold for anyone to be out there, which meant it'd be quiet if nothing else.

Neil glanced at Matt—enamored with Dan per usual, eating up every brilliant word out of her brilliant mouth—and followed the quiet Minyard out to the balcony, forgetting to politely dismiss himself from the conversation with the tech.

“I'm Neil,” Neil said, sticking out a hand. 

Instead of shaking it, Minyard deposited a cigarette and a lighter into it, then rested his arms on the rail and leaned forward a little. “Andrew,” he said.

Made sense: Neil had heard Aaron called the “normal” one, and Andrew definitely projected less of a “normal” aura than Aaron. Or maybe Aaron just tried, and Andrew didn't.

“Drummer, right?” Neil said. “You guys sounded good.”

Andrew glanced around at him. His expression didn't change.

“I actually started playing guitar because of Kevin,” Neil added. It's mostly true: he started because of his father, but he kept at it because of Kevin. “He was like, this child prodigy lighting up YouTube, and I—” It was too much information, probably. He changed note. “—really needed a hobby. I was lucky that Dan needed a touring guitarist just as—”

“Can you talk about anything else?” Andrew interrupted.

He was rude; that was the third thing Neil learned about him, after that he was quiet and that he liked to smoke. 

“Well, you aren't exactly a conversationalist. Ask me a question and I'll answer it.”

Andrew didn't take him up on the offer. Neil said, “Why did you want to smoke with a stranger?”

“You looked like you might be interesting,” Andrew said.

Neil almost laughed. Maybe, if he were willing to talk about all the reasons he was sitting in Dan's bus as a touring guitarist instead of taking advantage of his father owning one of the biggest record companies in the world. Instead, he said, “You thought wrong.”

“Yeah,” Andrew replied. “That's now apparent.” A few minutes of nothing, then: “Why are you packing?”

Neil's had a license to carry—forged, obviously—and whatever the opposite of a death wish is since he was old enough to be aware of either. “Can never be too safe.”

“Do you think someone here is going to shoot you?”

Neil reached for Andrew's arm, where a black armband valiantly attempted to conceal at least one knife. Andrew moved his arm out of Neil's reach, and Neil didn't follow it. “Do you?” he asked.

Neil doesn't remember much else of their conversation. Andrew asked to kiss him; Neil remembers that. Neil said no, and he remembers that, too, Andrew's immediate step out of Neil's personal space, his offer of a second cigarette. Neil said yes; Andrew didn't look at him; inside, a Dan the Wildnerness song started playing and someone—Nicky—squealed and started to sing along.

*

The drive to Austin from Dallas drags them through what Matt keeps calling the “real” Texas, not big cities but ranches and oil rigs, nothing but desert and cattle for miles. Neil plays video games with Matt on the small TV in the front lounge and tries not to think back to their last tour, when he and Andrew hid in the bunks while the rest of Andrew's band played Call of Duty or Halo or whatever in the front. Their shouts—muffled through the heavy doors separating the two parts of the bus—always made Neil pause. Andrew never cared. He was usually too busy trying to center himself, stay in the moment instead of reliving whatever trauma he never talks about.

“Pay attention!” Matt says. “Look, you just let that zombie eat you—honestly we're playing against each other next time, 'cause you're a liability on a team.”

Neil blinks. He has in fact just been eaten by a zombie. He hits the button to reset, uses up one of his lives, and switches to a different type of gun, more to project the image of doing something worthwhile than because he actually is doing anything worthwhile. 

Matt isn't buying it: he hits pause and twists to look at Neil.

“What's wrong?”

“I'm fine.”

Matt raises a skeptical eyebrow. He's only known Neil for a couple years, but the proximity of a tour bus could teach anyone their bandmates' habits, even a cipher like Neil. Or, well. He thinks he's a cipher. Andrew has suggested otherwise.

Neil doesn't take it back anyway. He presses the play button to restart the game. Matt looks at the TV, then back to Neil. Then, apparently deciding he won't get anything else out of Neil, turns back to the TV for good.

*

Neil texts, _how's montreal?_

Andrew's reply is a photograph—him in his giant puffy winter coat, the one he keeps wearing well into April. He has an uncharacteristic bright red hat tugged over his hair, black scarf knotted around his neck. _Cold_ is his one-word caption. 

Neil grins at his phone. _whose idea was it to have you guys in canada in december?_ even though he knows it was Kevin's since Otto Cyan just played a bunch of festivals on the west coast. 

_the one armed man_ , Andrew replies. It has the cadence of a reference, but Neil doesn't know it. _the second most annoying person in the world_

_does that make me first? honored_

_it isn't an award_

_coming from you it might as well be_

“What are you smiling at?” Dan says, looking at Neil's image in the mirror she's supposed to be doing her makeup in. Nearby, Matt snoozes on a dressing room couch, and Renee touches up her dyed hair in the sink. “You look like you're texting your fourth grade crush.” 

“I—” Neil says. “I didn't have a crush in fourth grade.” 

Dan raises an eyebrow. “You're not signing a contract to tour with someone else next year, are you? We're doing Europe in the spring, and there's no way you're missing our London shows.” 

In the spring, Otto Cyan will be in New York, taking a vacation and recording their next album. Neil has every intention of getting an apartment and staying put for as long as Andrew finds him interesting. 

He says, “I'm thinking of taking a break.” 

“We're only doing festivals,” Dan says. She picks up a giant tube of glitter and starts patting it around her eyes. “That's almost like a break. Weekend in the U.K., a couple of days in Barcelona—you can be home for the Memorial Day cookout.” 

She's joking; she knows as well as the rest of them that Neil doesn't have a family whose cookouts he'd ever feel comfortable attending. She smears on violet lipstick. 

“If you want, obviously,” she continues. “You know. It's a paycheck, and I like having you around.” 

Neil's phone vibrates. _stop talking_

_this is a text_ , Neil replies, then looks back up at Dan. “Yeah, I. Maybe.” 

She casts a pointed look toward his phone. “Alright, Josten. I get it. Hope they're worth it.” 

“We don't—” Neil says. “It's not like that. I—really like touring with you.” 

Dan laughs; she was only teasing. Andrew says, _semantics_ , and when Neil looks up from his phone again, Dan is smiling at him. 

____

*

The good thing about being a touring guitarist is that Neil doesn't need to write any of his own music or show any of that music to some adoring public. All of his own stuff stays in his head or apartment or binder where it belongs, but he still gets all the benefits of being on stage.

There's something exhilarating about it. Neil never gets used to it. He doesn't get stage fright, but there's anxiety there anyway, blending with adrenaline and lighting that eternal spark in Neil's gut. By the time his stuff is set up and he's poised to start playing, he's forgotten every issue he has with performing in front of thousands of people. The Moriyamas? A distant memory. His father? Can get fucked. 

It's just Neil, his guitar, his band, and the crowd. Dan crooning into a microphone. Matt on her other side, head banging while he strums his bass. Renee behind them all, solid, her backing vocals airier than Dan's rich soprano. 

He's not a permanent member. He's hired help. Neil likes it better that way, except this is his fourth tour with Dan (the first, he remembers, was just them playing some festivals in early afternoon and then using the rest of the day to network. Neil pretended he wasn't a Wesninski, and Dan charmed her way into a record contract), and it's starting to feel less like a temporary gig and more like he's part of this thing, whatever it is. 

Dan's adoring fans parrot the lyrics back at her. They're all in an especially good mood tonight—Grammy nominations have just come out, and Dan's got four, almost unheard of for a debut artist, especially in R&B. Dan keeps taking breaks between songs to talk about gratitude and appreciation and love: she didn't expect her music, all the harshness she's experienced tinged with characteristic subtle sweetness, to resonate with so many people; their love for her work means the world to her; she's humbled by their support.

Matt watches Dan in unqualified adoration. Neil gets it, the Dan thing; she's talented, a good songwriter and incredible singer. She works hard. She's not like Kevin Day, who shuts everyone in the room up every time he opens his mouth, but maybe that's the point. She likes the singalongs. Kevin needs to be the star. 

Neil puts all thoughts of Kevin and Otto Cyan out of his head and focuses on the moment. He closes his eyes. The insides of his eyelids are orange from the blinding stage lights. For a second, he isn't a person with problems and a perpetual ache in his side like a phantom limb; he's just fingers and guitar strings, someone else's music radiating out of him. He thinks he could do this forever even if it means he'd have to commit to something in the long term. Neil Josten, guitarist for Dan the Wildnerness. It doesn't sound great, but it doesn't feel like dying, either. Not anymore.

*

The only reason Neil has Snapchat on his phone is that Nicky stole said phone and downloaded it for him. The only person Neil ever gets snaps from is Nicky, a flood of images at all hours of everything around him, whether it's Kevin trying to come up with a lyric with his old acoustic guitar (restrung for his right hand—his left hand still doesn't have the dexterity it used to) in his lap or Aaron flirting with the singer from the band they're touring with or, when Neil's lucky, Andrew smoking a cigarette and very clearly wanting not to be disturbed.

“Hey, Andrew, smile, it's for Neil,” Nicky's voice says, and Andrew's only response is a heavy-lidded glare. Nicky doesn't get the subtext, just laughs and turns the camera on himself. “He's not interested. I'll smile for you, though, look!” 

A few minutes later, Nicky sends another snap of Andrew, this time just a photo of Andrew sitting cross-legged in his bunk—he's short, but even for him, it's a tight fit—with a book in his lap and his cigarettes and lighter next to his knee. Nicky's caption— _WE MISS YOU!_ —makes Neil's stomach swoop and then settle uncomfortably.

He replies, _miss you too_ , and turns off his phone.

*

“Dude, you look like shit,” Dan says.

It's early. That must be why. Neil scrubs a hand through dirty hair. Unlike FAST, no one in Dan the Wilderness does very many drugs. Dan and Matt drink, and Dan occasionally smokes when she's writing, but the rest of them don't have the excuse of a hangover to cover up their inability to function this early. 

“I was up late,” he says. 

It's true; he and Andrew were talking until well past two in the morning Neil's time. Neil doesn't want to think about how late it was for Andrew, on the east coast. Neil woke up on the couch in the lounge with the phone pressed to his ear, the call still connected, steady breathing on the other end.

“Is it about that mystery crush you were texting?”

“Mystery crush?” Matt echoes, grinning. “Come on. A crush? Our Neil Josten?”

Neil rubs an eye. “I'm not twelve.”

“Right, you're a very mature adult,” Dan says, raising a significant eyebrow in Matt's direction. “Well, wash up, then. We need to be at the station in—” she looks down at her phone. “Thirty minutes. You guys'll have a little extra time in the dressing room since I'm doing an interview before we play any music, but I mean, once we're out there—” She pauses to look at Neil again. “Are you sure it's only that you were up late? You just look kind of off.”

“I just need a coffee,” Neil says. “There's a Starbucks on the way, right?”

“Does it even matter how he looks?” Matt says. For someone with that mindset, he's really gone all out: leather, a bandana, eyeliner. It was probably Dan's idea. “It's radio, right? No one's gonna see him.”

“They're live streaming the whole thing on their website.”

“Ugh,” Matt says. “They didn't have that when I was a kid. You wanted to see your favorite band play a radio station, you had to get up at six and skip school and get detention and a call home and—”

“You sound like a Baby Boomer,” Neil tells him. “Do you have dry shampoo?”

*

On their first tour, they had a different drummer and hotel nights were the four of them crammed into a double room in the cheapest place within a half hour of the venue. On their second tour, they had an indie label and only two hotel nights in three months, but they got two rooms—one for the guys and one for the girls. On their tour with Otto Cyan, hotel nights were more frequent, and Dan and Matt were in the process of getting together, so every now and then Renee would knock on Neil's door and sleep in Matt's bed while Matt spent the night in her room.

Now, they get hotel nights more than ever, and Neil officially shares with Renee most of the time. She's a good roommate, quiet, more likely to spend a few hours in the gym than turn on the TV in their room.

Tonight, she's out with Seth and Allison. She won't drink. Instead, she'll come back, change into workout clothes, and put in an hour or two in the hotel gym. Then she'll come back again, shower, and get into bed. Neil likes that about Renee: her routines are predictable even if she isn't.

It means he gets time to himself. For someone who spent so long entirely alone, Neil still can't quite get accustomed to the silence in a room no one else is in. Maybe that's why, for the first time in months, he picks up his guitar with an ulterior motive. He wants to write a song. He's never been much of a lyricist—words don't come as easily to him as they do to Dan or Kevin, or even Nicky—but he likes writing music. He strums at his guitar, jotting down chord progressions and notes as they come to him. The melody is simple: he's out of practice, and anyway he's distracted. 

The first time he and Andrew kissed, they were parked behind an arena in Kansas City. It was a mark of Otto Cyan's popularity that they had a show in Kansas City at all; Dan had barely sold any albums there, but there was a crowd down the street already when they drove past the front of the venue.

“Remember our honesty game?” Neil said. 

He and Andrew were smoking behind the bus, Andrew with a hood pulled over his head and Neil covering his hair with a red beanie he stole from Andrew's bus. Probably Nicky's.

Andrew didn't answer him, which meant that he did or else that he wanted to hear whatever Neil had to say. 

“Why did you ask me to kiss you? The night we met?”

“That was not the night we met.” 

It was true enough; they'd been introduced the day before at a lunch with Dan and Cyan's record label.

“Okay, the first time we talked, then,” Neil amended.

Andrew ashed his cigarette and took a long drag before he answered. “You seemed interesting.”

“Do I still?”

“Still what?”

“Seem interesting.”

Andrew avoided eye contact. “I hate you,” he said, which Neil already knew. “But options are limited, and you were there.”

Neil remembers a flood of relief after that—Andrew's feelings toward him, he was convinced, weren't feelings at all. Just attraction, something Neil wasn't accustomed to feeling until he'd met Andrew. He could play it out, and after the tour he wouldn't see Andrew again. If his father ever had reason to track him down, he wouldn't have any extra leverage. And Neil could continue to tour with Dan the Wilderness or any other band in need of a guitarist without having to risk missing anyone.

“I'm here now,” Neil said, and leaned in. “Yes or no?”

Andrew said yes. That should've been the end of it: kissing behind buses, or in their bunks when they could get away with it, or on blissful hotel nights when Andrew got his own room. It should've just been physical. That was what Andrew wanted. That's what Andrew still wants.

Neil's phone is ringing. There's only one person who ever calls him.

“Hi,” Neil says. “How was your show?”

“Find another topic, or I'll hang up,” Andrew says.

Neil huffs a laugh into his empty hotel room. The threat is only partially real; Andrew has hung up on him only to call right back on more than one occasion.

He doesn't have another topic. When he tries to think past their respective shows, he can only think of Andrew pressing Neil's wrists together above his head, or else Andrew half in his lap while a DJ played an opening set at a venue in some state Neil can't remember. If he tries to think about anything other than the immediate past or future, he only comes up with what it's like to be with Andrew; and how much he aches all the time, being without him.

“Well?” Andrew says.

“I,” Neil says, then stops. 

The truth is he hates this. Either they're out of sync because of timezones, or they're in sync and both on a stage. Even when the times work out, they only rarely have privacy at the same times for long enough to have anything approximating a conversation. 

Andrew won't want to hear it. He's made it very clear what this is.

Neil says it anyway, almost by accident: “I miss you.” For a trained liar, Neil isn't very good at hiding his true feelings anymore, at least not when it comes to Andrew. But the silence he gets in response stings anyway, even if it is typical to Andrew.

Finally, after too long, Andrew says, “Don't say—stupid things.”

Something warm floods Neil's insides at that; Andrew is right, and it's stupid to let himself feel relieved that Andrew, in his own way, misses him too. He feels himself smile. He's suddenly never been happier to have the room to himself. 

He says, “Okay.”

*

It's probably lucky that Otto Cyan covered “[Such Great Heights](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L9fGUwh8kk),” because if they hadn't, Neil wouldn't have anything to listen to when he's wallowing. Well. He could've listened to the original, he supposes, but Ben Gibbard was always a little whiney for his taste.

He shouldn't have acknowledged it—missing Andrew—or else he shouldn't have said it out loud. It's made everything more complicated. Now he has to accept it; he doesn't look tired because he's been up late. He doesn't seem quiet because he's tired. It's all because of Andrew, because missing him has become—fuck, something cliché and ridiculous, wound-like. Untreated, too, festering, because he can't admit that to Andrew. “I miss you” has to mean “I miss kissing you,” not “I miss squeezing into your bunk and letting you trace the scars on my chest with your fingers,” or “I miss standing outside in the rain trying to get our cigarettes lit,” or “I miss your hair.” This is Andrew, a hard candy coating wrapped around trauma. No secret chocolate insides, no pretending to be cold to cover up a secret soft side. If he cares about Neil at all, it's buried under so many layers of whatever forces govern Andrew's mind that it probably won't come out any time soon. 

Neil closes his eyes and listens to the low rumble of Kevin's voice. If he focuses, he can separate the drumming from the rest of the music, bass drum steady behind the other layers. When Andrew tries, he's never offbeat. Even when he doesn't try, he's almost never offbeat. Neil wonders what threw him off on Fallon—the crowd, Fallon himself, not caring enough. 

It's Christmas. Dan and Matt are Facetiming with Matt's mom, who is upset they haven't taken time off to fly to New York to see her. Renee is talking to her foster mom, who doesn't seem to care that it's Christmas at all.

Neil doesn't have anyone to call. He turns the song up just as it starts again. _I am thinking it's a sign_ —it's a stupid lyric. Who has freckles in their eyes?

It's weird to think that the year is almost over. It's the first time in ages that Neil will spend the new year in an area too warm for snow, and it's strange, thinking the year is going to change but it still feels like summer here in the southwest. 

He ignores the ache in his gut. It was a good idea to tour the southern and western US while the rest of the country gets buried under a few feet of snow. This is good. This is better.

Still, he wishes—well. Nothing specific. He just wishes.

He turns over in his bunk, drags his covers up over his head. Matt and Dan's voices drift in from the lounge, cheerful. The song repeats; Neil doesn't have a word for this emotion.

*

They have three straight nights of shows in L.A. They'll spend twenty-ninth and thirtieth at the Novo downtown, then the thirty-first playing an abridged set an hour before midnight at a New Year's party in west Hollywood. They're supposed to be staying at the party afterward—Dan's way of dragging them all into networking again, and probably also fun for the rest of them—but Neil is already brainstorming ways to get out of it.

 _we're prepping for times sq ugh_ , Nicky texts Neil. Otto Cyan are performing in New York on New Year's Eve. Good for them. By the time Neil's band gets off stage, it'll be well past midnight on the east coast, and Andrew and the rest of Otto Cyan will probably be enjoying the night at some club. Neil will be trying to sneak out of the party and into a cab to the hotel.

Until then, he has L.A. to try to enjoy. It's warm here, and that's probably the only good thing about southern California: it's bright and sunny even while the rest of the country is suffering from acute vitamin D deficiency. 

They have a night off the day they get there, and Neil spends it going to see another band play the Novo. They have half an orchestra on stage with them, shiny brass instruments catching the light from the disco ball, around twenty-five people standing in front of the hundreds in the crowd. 

Both of Dan's shows here will have around three thousand. These people haven't sold out the venue. Neil can guess at why: there isn't much of an audience for indie jazz bands. 

Still, he huddles near the door and lets himself close his eyes and enjoy the music. The only shows he's been to in the past year have been for bands he's touring with; even when they played Coachella in the spring they didn't have enough time to see anyone else before getting on their bus to get to the next venue up the coast. 

He shouldn't love live music the way he does. He grew up in nightclubs and arenas; he's been physically tossed off stages and hit in the chest with instruments. His mother broke his guitar in half when they ran away and made him swear he'd never play again, but here he is, fingers callused and an old sore on the side of his neck where his strap cuts into it every night. He's not dead yet.

When he was young, he'd sit on the floor of the Rams Head in Baltimore during soundcheck and press his palms down next to his knees to feel the bass in his fingers. At some point, he wanted to be a drummer, but the steadiness of it didn't suit him. He took to tagging along when there were drummers around anyway, annoying everyone, more often than not being punished for it when the house emptied out and only he and his parents were left.

He found Kevin before his mother died, a YouTube video that had gone viral because the kid in it was only sixteen but rivaled some of the best guitarists around and had a good voice too. Kevin ended up on Ellen; Neil stared at the TV, breathless, because Kevin wasn't a ghost. 

That should've been the end of it. If Neil were smart, it would have been. But then his mother died, and Neil had nowhere else to go, so he went to a music producer and asked for a job.

The band's set ends. Around him, the crowd—hipsters mostly, early twenties, all holding cheap tall boys—shouts for an encore. The lights go on again; the band is back to do another song. Neil steals out now, before everyone else tries to get out of the double doors at once. 

When he gets back to their hotel, only Renee is in. She is stretched out in the bed opposite Neil's, reading a book of poetry.

“How were they?” she asks.

“Fine,” Neil replies. “I'm going for a run.”

When he gets back, Renee is asleep. Neil showers and follows her lead.

*

“You know that Kanye song?” Matt is saying. They're about to go on stage for their outdoor New Year's Eve show. Matt's in a FAST sweatshirt, but Neil is too warm already to imagine covering up any more than he has already. “I'm so ready to be back on the east coast.”

“I didn't know that was a Kanye song. Is that on Yeezus?” Neil says. He stills while Renee draws eyeliner onto his face.

“He means 'No More Parties in L.A.,'” Dan says, looking critically at Neil. “I think that's probably enough. I was thinking glitter, but it'd just look weird on you.”

“He's not really the sparkly type, yeah,” Matt says, shaking some of Dan's face glitter into his spiked hair. 

Someone's assistant knocks on the door. “We need you guys outside now, onstage in five.”

Dan tucks her phone into Matt's back pocket. “You're taking the sweatshirt off, right?”

Matt obediently drags the sweatshirt off and replaces it with his leather jacket, then leads them outside. 

The temperature is better out here, mid-sixties, a light breeze. Neil undoes the top button of his shirt and takes his spot on stage. 

Dan's music isn't what Neil would make if he were making his own music. Her rock-infused R&B doesn't perfectly mirror his personal taste. But playing it every night has made him a better guitarist, and since he's the guitarist credited on her album, royalties will probably carry him through the next year or so. He could leave if he wanted, and he'd be fine for a while. It's a kind of freedom he never expected to have. 

When Dan sings, everyone sings along. That's always been the way with her. Early on, when no one knew the words, she'd spend half the set teaching the crowd chants. Now everyone knows every word, and she's won awards and been nominated for more. 

He wouldn't change it. Maybe he'd make it so he and Andrew are closer together more often, maybe make it so his father were dead instead of a specter that haunts him every time he gets too close to Baltimore, but he wouldn't change this. He can sleep soundly on the bus every night. He trusts his bandmates, and there are only about eight people in the world he trusts enough to fall asleep near (eight more than before he first toured with Dan the Wilderness, but still. Probably lower than average). He doesn't even carry a gun around all the time anymore. 

Their set is shorter than usual, forty-five minutes to screaming fans who are already drunk. They're off the stage by eleven, whisked by the same aide from before back to the dressing room to change into club-appropriate clothing (Matt leaves his leather jacket; Dan changes from a jumpsuit into a dress; Renee drops her earplugs on the counter next to her makeup bag) and then freed once more into the inside of the club.

It's warmer in here, obviously, too many bodies packed together, and loud enough that you'd need to huddle close for anyone to hear you. Neil and Renee might be the only sober people for miles. 

“We were good tonight,” she says, leaning toward Neil's ear.

“Yeah,” Neil says. The crowd was drunk, but they knew the words anyway. With Dan, they always do. “I—thanks for. This whole tour, I mean. Giving me so much space. I don't know how you knew, but—I really needed it.”

Renee smiles. “We've known each other for years, Neil. Of course I knew.” 

She's half-watching Seth and Allison, who are at the bar getting drinks, Allison's hand tucked into Seth's back pocket. 

“Besides,” she adds, “maybe it was not purely selfless.”

Neil blinks. “What, both of them?”

Renee doesn't reply. Something has distracted her, and though Neil couldn't say what, he's known her for long enough to know that when Renee is distracted it's worth figuring out why. He follows her gaze, but doesn't see whatever it is she's seen. 

There's an exit behind him and another to his left. He has a gun and ammo on the bus, which is parked in a lot a half-mile away. His shoes aren't ideal for running, but they'll have to do until he can get cash and get to a store. “What?”

“I think someone's here to see you.”

The crowd parts; Neil thinks of the Red Sea. In sunglasses and all black, somehow wearing a leather jacket and a scarf despite the heat of the club, is Andrew.

“To see me?” Neil repeats. 

Despite the layers, Andrew's blond hair is a beacon. He is obviously making a beeline for Neil and Renee. Neil doesn't know how he found them—the club is packed, and neither Neil nor Renee drinks, so it doesn't make sense that he'd look for them near the bar. 

“It's almost midnight,” Renee says, pressing her fingers into Neil's back to push him forward. “Try to have fun.”

“How do you—”

The words die in his throat. Renee disappears, probably deciding she'll take her chances with whichever member of FAST she's into. Neil makes his way toward Andrew. 

“What are you doing here?” Neil has to shout over the noise. “I thought you were doing the ball drop thing.”

Andrew waves a pack of cigarettes in Neil's face. It's a good call—the back patio will probably be quieter even though SZA is playing on the stage just beyond it. 

They have to fight through the crowd again to get out there, Andrew's hand around Neil's wrist. Neil wishes there weren't fabric separating them, then acknowledges how stupid it is to wish that and decides he'll never tell Andrew about it. 

“We pre-taped it,” Andrew says once they're outside. It's smoky despite the open air: nearly everyone has a cigarette or some form of weed. Neil tries to remember if weed is legal in California yet and can't. “Last night. Kevin had an interview this morning and we did two songs live for NBC.” He isn't looking at Neil; at first Neil thinks he's enjoying the muffled SZA. Then Andrew adds, “There was a storm. My flight was delayed. Three hours on the tarmac.”

“That sucks,” Neil says. Andrew doesn't like flying; the extra time probably made an already frustrating experience close to unbearable. “I—were you okay?” He doesn't know why he feels so awkward. Andrew won't answer a question like that, so Neil adds, “You would've been too early anyway. We only got off stage a little while ago.”

Andrew finally looks at him, pushing his sunglasses out of his face to do it. “Sometimes I think you are smarter than you look. But then you say something so incredibly stupid and I remember the truth.”

It shouldn't be so comforting to be called stupid by Andrew. Neil smiles. “What's the truth?”

Andrew leans close, tugging Neil down by his collar. It reaches Neil the moment before their lips touch, and he actually laughs, startling Andrew into letting go of him. 

“You wanted to see our set,” Neil says, astonished and delighted. “You—”

“You said you missed me,” Andrew says. He has little indents on either side of his nose like he's been wearing the sunglasses all day. Probably he has. 

The music has stopped. At first, Neil thinks he's imagining it. Then he hears the countdown starting.

Kissing at midnight is cliché. So was listening to “Such Great Heights” when Neil doesn't even really like the Postal Service. So was falling asleep on the phone and kissing on a tour bus and taking comfort in Andrew calling him stupid over text, even if Andrew doesn't know, even if Neil keeps it to himself. Maybe this whole thing is cliché—maybe they both are, and right now, the countdown still going around them, Neil can't find a single reason to care.

With three seconds left, he says, “Kiss me,” and Andrew does.

**Author's Note:**

> dan's band is a sza knockoff which is why sza plays right after her. cause i thought it was funny that the party planners would pick identical acts lmfao. kevin's band is not that well thought through they're probably like a mix of maroon 5 and 21 pilots. definitely bad. 
> 
> shouts 2 the mods for keeping these exchanges going i! love yall!!!
> 
> if you enjoyed please leave a comment! if you spotted a typo please leave a comment! if you wanna talk i'm on tumblr [here](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Ok there's a bunch of stuff I have to credit you don't have to read it but I'll feel bad for just stealing a bunch of stuff from Ben Gibbard so here we go:
> 
> Dan's band name is a reference to Andrew McMahon the Wilderness. I keep seeing them on festival lineups and expecting them to play Jack's Mannequin/Something Corporate songs but then I always miss their sets oops. If you have seen them live please tell me if they only play his new stuff or if they play some stuff for the vintage emos like me. 
> 
> I almost called Kevin's band Saving the Day since I went for the emo reference with Dan's but it felt too selfindulgent. Instead I called them Otto Cyan, which is a misspelling of otocyon, which is the scientific name for the bat-eared fox, which is a weird and cute animal. I know the name is bad okay. I'm not a band name titler I just write fanfiction for fun.
> 
> There's like a million ["Such Great Heights"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wrsZog8qXg) references, including the title. I know it's cliche but it's like the quintessential "we're both in a band and we miss each other" song right lmao anyway the theme of this fic is that cliches are good. There are also a few references to "[Waiting Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaI5JCxOCdw)" by Banks.
> 
> it's weird writing a version of neil who listens to music and therefore makes references to famous musicians considering book!neil would probably think kayne west is the west side of a city called kanye, and “the postal service” would just be another group of people he's scared of (because they know his address)
> 
> sorry these notes are a mess i'm tired af


End file.
